Moss and Mushrooms

Brand new colony // the postal service

A short story inspired by the song "Brand new colony" by the postal service.
TW: CSA, Incest, amenisa

A perfect gentleman
I look up from my Vans, "I think you're going to like it, well, at least I hope so." "Hey! Don't tell me, we have to wait until we get back home." I stare at Bonnie, she's the prettiest girl I've ever seen. She's wearing a pink sweater and a blue pleated skirt, she has on colorful makeup, as she always does. I stare out the car window at the blue sky. "God I love you, like a lot." She takes one of her hands off the steering wheel and holds my hand "I love you too." The ride home is silent, not in the awkward way, but in the quiet connection sort of way. "Don't look!" I playfully yell at her. She smiles brightly "I won't!" We like to play this game where we go to the thrift store together and buy each other gifts, then show each other when we get home. "Who goes first?" She asked. "Obviously me!" I pull out my bag from behind me and hand it to her. I watched as she opened it, I got her some strawberry patches to sew onto her clothes and a teddy bear that is dressed like a circus clown. 'Sam!" She pulls the teddy and patches out of her bag "Stop, this is perfect!" She puts her hand on her heart "I love it!" I lean in to kiss her "I knew you would." She pulls the bag from under the kitchen table, "I know you like to paint your clothes." I open the bag and pull out a white pair of converse "Wait! I was thinking of buying these!" She nods her head and smiles with her pinkish red lip stain. I turn my head the other way dramatically and reach into the bag. "Is this a book?" I rub my hands across the cover and the pages and quickly turn my hand to the book. It's red with a yellow person on the cover, the title reads "Ephemeral Heart." I flip through the pages, I look at the margins, it's a poetry book! "Bonnie! I love it! You know I love poetry!" She smiles warmly "I know you do." She pauses, "It's so cute when you get excited." "Have I made you watch Dead Poets Society yet?" "I think you've referenced it about six hundred times but I've never seen it." "Well, looks like we have the day planned out." It's autumn and cold out so I get us some blankets and light a vanilla candle. I queue up the movie while she's in the kitchen making us lattes. "I put in extra cinnamon just how you like it." I cuddle up to her closely and enjoy the rest of the day, just us.

When your judgements on it's brink
I sit up in bed to find Bonnie sitting at my desk on her phone. "Good morning," I say groggily. "Good morning." I start getting out of bed and ask, "Do you want any coffee?" She follows me into the kitchen. She is wearing red plaid pajama pants and one of my t-shirts. "Can I talk to you about something?" She looks upset, "Of course, what's wrong?" I am pouring the water into the coffee pot, my heart racing, I can feel every beat in my chest. "Do you remember what you did last night?" My stomach drops. I wrack my mind for the memory, whatever it may be, I try to focus on retrieving it but I can't. I turn towards her, "I guess not. What did I do? Did I do something wrong?" She sits up quickly "Sam, no honey nothing like that, you didn't do anything bad." I sit at the kitchen table. "Can you tell me what I did? I'm sorry this keeps happening, I'm really sorry." "Well I came back into the room and you were acting entirely differently than you normally do." This is the part where I want to crawl under the floor and hide there forever, but I didn't. "What do you mean?" I asked her. "I came into the bedroom and you had this horrified look on your face, you were looking at me as if you didn't know me. You kept telling me how confused you were but you wouldn't tell me why." She paused. "You kept saying "I don't want to do this tonight" but then you would take it back and say "But you wouldn't, you never would." You seemed so different, your voice sounded different and you didn't want to get close to me." I look down at my legs, I can feel myself shaking. "I'm really sorry." My eyes are stinging, I'm trying hard not to cry, but I know it's coming. "Bonnie I'm really sorry." I feel the hot tears start rolling down my cheek. She looks at me, "It's okay, really, please don't beat yourself up over this, okay?" I really want to crawl under the floor now, more than I did before. My voice is shaking, "I don't know what to do about this." "I think you need to talk to a therapist. I know you don't want to but you need to."